Alexis' smile was brittle. "But wanting to fly with a beautiful lady is still something you want from me. You want permission to fly and look at me." Alexis glanced away. "You can do whatever you want. But I am not interested in a relationship at this time, so if you think of something beyond looking, you'll need to find another beautiful lady." She waved at the gathered novas. "There is no shortage here."

Praxis was mildly confused, though not completely. It was no surprise that one who had similar abilities to him would be wary of his actions and motivations. "Very well, though I may go out on a limb and try to talk as well."

Praxis spread his wings to their full span as he simply hovered there, just barely visible in the slow descent that always came with hovering. "Do not worry, Alexis. I do not know your experiences with others, but I like to consider myself a gentleman. Nothing more, nothing less"

Jael laughed, a low, throaty chuckle that has a touch of real embarrassment. Kazuo can see an idea in her eyes, and if he had the common sense that he should have possessed, he would have been running at this point. But he didn't listen to his better judgement, and so he didn't run.

Jael had already seen Flicker in the air, and imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. She stepped behind Kazuo, slipped her arms snuggly around his torso and said, "I hope you can survive a fall, because I've never tested my strength this way." Before Kazuo could answer, their feet left the ground. Jael was 100% sure that this was a bad idea, but she was still doing it. Grinning, inhaling the scent that was Kazuo with each breath, she rose to join the other novas.

Whereas Kazuo didn't listen to his common sense, Jael had impulse issues. The future explosion promised to be fabulous.

Knockout goggles at Ausrine, her eyes wide. Oh damn. Oh, damn. I know from hot - I own a mirror - but damn.

So enraptured is Danielle, that her grip on Flicker starts to slip a little, then a little more... but she recovers fast enough to keep herself from dropping Flicker, holding her tight. Don't drop her. Jesus, don't drop her. Bad bad bad.

"Downtown's great! Baseball's great! Who are the Browns again? Are they baseball? Hi. Ausrine, right? I'd shake your hand, but, you know."

"Boop!" Nova yelped, almost slipping from Danielle's grasp. After a moment, she recovered. "Head for the tall buildings, then, and the baseball and football stadiums are on the other side."

"All men who want something insist they are gentlemen," Alexis said, drifting closer to the rest of the novas. "I can understand that a man might be willing to want nothing from a woman, but I have never seen it." She crossed her arms, adding to her unassailable aura. She seemed willing to continue in silence.

Ahahaha. Oh boy. Here it comes again. Oh God, I'm so UGLY compared to everyone here. Roxanne gets that look on her face again, as Ausrine's true arrival sends pheromone levels spiking.

"Yeah... woo." Roxanne rubs the fur on her arms, her tails all but wagging in excitement. "I changed my mind, and I think I'm going to dorm. No, land first, THEN dorm. Bad to do it the other way 'round, haha. See you later, Nova, and call me before you leave 'cause I don't think I can fly all the way home. Oog."

Roxanne drifts back down, calming noticeably. She lands, and her eyes glow green, reconfiguring her dress so that her tails flow underneath the skirt rather than poke out the back. Thus satisfied, she dorms, relaxing. "Oog. I am never gonna get used to this nose."

As Dozer finished off his bowl of Tiramisu and the flyers take to the air, the giant paused and looked through the contents of the cooler for the lid for his bowl, and he looked back up at the flyers. He got a twinkle in his eyes as he yelled up, "Anyone want to play Frisbee up there? I got something that'll work for a flying disc." He pulled back his arm and aimed at the cloud of flying novas, and waited for the launch command.

Miranda flaps back a bit, taking in the group. "Beautiful. Peach of a shot. Keep it up." She swings the camera to the ground to take in Dozer. "Oh, is he actually going to throw that? Oh my."

Danielle nods. "Sorry that I almost, you know, uh... sorry." She manages a smile as she tilts, heading towards the buildings. "I hope you're not cold. I heard you can survive in space so I guess that's a dumb question."

Praxis simply smiled and nodded to her, duplicating her position almost perfectly(being that he's both male and huge, he can't get it right completely, but outside of that and the relaxed, easy smile on his face, the similarities are uncanny)

((OOC: Perform 5, Artistic Genius -- :p))

Aušrine watches as Praxis and Alexis begin the slow ascent up to join her, and those floating around her. Praxis is gorgeous, and she's been trying to ignore that fact all day, because she's already decided that she will not - will not - fall for a man simply because of how good he looks. She's been on the recieving end of that situation far too many times to find it appealing, and she doesn't want to one of those casualties. She is privately relieved that he's chosen to direct his attentions elsewhere.

Aušrine jerks her head up to see Danielle speaking to her, and immediately realizes that she's about to drop Flicker.
"Oh! Hi. Careful there! Oh my...", says Aušrine, trying to catch her breath after watching Flicker almost fall.
Aušrine smiles and says, "sure, that sounds like as good a plan as any."

Seeing Alexis and Praxis drifting closer, Aušrine tells them, "we're thinking of taking a short flight over the city, and then the stadiums after that. Does that sound good to you two?"

"Oh... well, ok then, I guess." Aušrine feels a little put off by this sudden development, just when things were getting interesting, but there's really nothing she can do about it. "Um, have fun."

At just about the same time, Jael and Kazuo suddenly came floating up to join them, Jael holding Kazuo in much the same way that Danielle was holding Flicker. Aušrine felt herself blushing a little at the sight; she always reacted this way when she happened to see Kazuo with a woman (though Jael was really just a girl! what is he thinking, anyway?), somehow it always felt like he was cheating on her or something, but since they weren't even together that made no sense.

Aušrine looks away from Jael and Kazuo, glad for the distraction, and shouted back down to Dozer, "We were just about to go flying through the city! You want to come?"
Then, as an after thought, she looked back to those gathered and asked, "or, do we want to play frisbee?"

Kazuo Kanai has no idea what he smells like, but, he supposes, Jael probably has an idea, now that her face is more or less buried in the hollow between his shoulder and his neck. He should ask her about it later.

They're already in the air when he answers her (sarcastically), "well, I guess now's as good a time as any to find out."
Kazuo expected her to do something like this, but the expectation and the reality are two different things, and now he finds himself in an awkward position and with not a whole lot of control over what happens next. He grins. A little voice in the back of his head is telling him that this might not be such a hot idea, but Kazuo says fuck that, he's having a good time right now, and he'll worry about the future when it gets here.

As they rise up to the others floating above, Kazuo sees them watching and shrugs (or tries to anyway, with Jael's arms wedged under his own he can't really get his shoulders to emote properly), and then offers, by way of explanation, "we're testing her load-bearing capabilities."
He makes an obligatory, but utterly futile, attempt to look over his shoulder at Jael, and he asks, "how ya doin, Jael? I don't want you to throw out yer flyin' muscles on my account or nothin'."

Jael is famous throughout her circle of family and friends for not thinking things through. Aušrine's reaction to seeing her with Kazuo was one of those things. While Jael couldn't see it - she can't see much in front of her except a well-muscled neck meeting well-muscled shoulders - she is a woman, and just because Kazuo's feelings are cut-and-dried doesn't mean that Aušrine's are. Jael had a sudden image in her head: the most beautiful woman in the world unable to be with the man she loved because he saw them as partners only. She didn't know if it was true, but it was ironic enough and appealed to Jael's childish romantic ideals, which was were based mostly on soap operas and teen dramas.


Jael shrugged, a movement he can feel though his back. "I've lifted things heavier than you." As if to prove it, she carefully shifted Kazuo in her arms - which he now knew were quite sturdy - until he was lower than before. She was able to look over his shoulder now, which was good in that she felt less like Kazuo's living elevator and more like an actual participant. It was bad in that this position felt more intimate, and she again wondered if this was a good idea.

"See?" she said, grinning at all the novas. "I didn't want to leave him on the ground. I didn't think I could bring up Dozer; someone should probably get him. But Kazuo is a light-weight and no problem." Casually, conversationally even, she added, "I got enough strength from my eruption to force my claws through a grown man's pelvis bone, his spine and into the base of his rib cage."

Kazuo just smiles while Jael jokes at his expense. If all it takes to be carried through the sky by a nubile, young mega-babe is putting up with being called a "light-weight" then sign Kazuo up for the latest diet fad!
Kazuo has just realized that, along with all of her other considerable talents, Jael is obviously a master of good timing as well. Because there's nothing like cramming down large quantities of sugar-loaded desserts, and then discussing evisceration while flying through the air. Good times.

"That's an attractive image," says Kazuo dryly. "And I'm suddenly much happier that your hands are nowhere near my pelvis than I was a minute ago."
He looks back over his shoulder and says, in a sarcastic, mock-quiet voice that the others floating nearby can probably still hear, "just between you an' me, Jael, that's not really the kind a talent you wanna brag about at a party."
"Jus' sayin'."
Then he says, in a more seriously-quiet voice, but in a tone still laden with sarcasm, "also, next time avoid hitting the pelvis or the spine. That way your claws'll continue on up inside the rib cage, and you can tear out the poor slob's heart or lungs. No matter how gruesomely impressive, you can't call it a proper Death Blow unless you can finish it up by pulling out the guy's heart before he hits the ground. Everybody knows that."

Jael smirked a little. "Meh... first time jitters," Jael said as way of explaination, her warm breath trailing over his ear. "And I wasn't trying to eviscerate him necessarily - he was trying to rape me, so I was trying to emasculate him. It worked." She sounded a little smug about that, too.

One of Sakolove's triggers tripped, and Jael's mind realized that she had made a minor mistake. "Sorry," she added a little sheepishly. "I forgot myself for a moment there. So," she said, clearly changing the topic, "do we have someone get Dozer and fly around, or are we going to play frisbee? Whatever we do, it should include him."

The comment about pelvises - specifically, Kazou's pelvis - sent Jael's mind spinning down pathes that she was better off ignoring, at least around men other than Jimmy. It didn't help that she was now very familiar with the form of Kazuo. She had a sudden urge to rub her hands up and down him, just to see what happened; what the others would say, what Aušrine would do and what Kazuo's reaction would be. And while Jael had impulse problems, she wasn't that crazy. She contented herself with the light brush of his body as he moved against her.

He was one of the last to take flight, and his was by far the most simple manifestation of the ability, he simply rose into the air and flew up to meet the others, catching up with the group.

"Sorry I'm late, but I felt it best to at least put our stuff together neatly, lest anyone come to try to take any of it. "A little note stating who the owners were." He smiles and flies along with them.

His eyes beheld Ausrinne and he did not contain his awe. "Simply beautiful. That is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen." Despite his feelings for Noriko, he knew that she didn't hold a candle to the image of female physical beauty before him. Still he managed to close his mouth and regain his composure.

He casually flew near to Ausirne and smiled. "I hope you do not think me too forward, but you are the most beautiful woman I have ever met." There it was an open admission, delivered in a truly honest tone. There was no hint of question or indication of desire, just the complimentary statement of a fact.

He looks down at Dozer and feels a moment of pity for the earthbound nova. "I feel bad about him not being able to fly. I can make him fasster, but I can't grant him flight."

"Oh," says Kazuo, sounding more impressed than shocked, "nevermind then. Good for you!" Kazuo finds that, once again, he needs to reassess his opinion of his newest blonde, blue-eyed, and beautiful acquaintance. That short little statement, and her tone while she said it, just told him a whole lot about Jael, but it would take him a while to sort through it all.
Kazuo is, on the whole, glad that he came today, because so far he's liked everyone he's talked to (which, admittedly, is a whopping two people, both young girls), and he's definitely liking Jael, but he's beginning to wonder about the increasinly large body of evidence that she's got some serious abnormalities in her personality. Kazuo isn't scared of what he's been seeing - or even concerned, necassarily - he's no stranger to violence (as his face can attest), so rather than being afraid of that tone in her voice, he's more excited by it than anything else. He is sort of curious as to what the source of all this suppressed violence is though, because what she just said makes it sound like it was there before this attempted rape she's just mentioned. Interesting.
Kazuo gets an incredulous look on his face at this (his good eye does anyway, the dead one just sort of squints as though annoyed that it's being asked to participate in what it considers an unnecessary show of emotion), and asks, "Why?"

Charles would like you, Jael thought as she considered her flying companion. He'd like to take you and teach you how to be a good crimefighter. For the first time, Jael realized that she felt a kinship with someone. She felt like she'd found someone who was just as much of a monster as she was. The thought was thrilling. It should have also been frightening, but it wasn't - it was just thrilling.

It made her wish Jimmy didn't exist. She snuck a glance at Daniel flying with Ryusei and at the silent Praxis flying court to the black-haired girl. They pulled her too, but there was something about Kazuo...


"Because it's nice," Jael's conditioning replied. "He shouldn't be left behind, just because he can't fly. That's why I picked you up. Because you couldn't fly, and shouldn't be left behind just because of that." She sounded sincere. She also didn't sound very much like the young woman who had been pleased to announce that she emasculated someone for trying to rape her. "It's the right thing to do."

Aušrine smiles at the first part of this statement, but the smile froze and then slowly slid off her face at the last part. How gruesome she thinks. No wonder Kazuo's interested in her, she's just his type. Oh, now that wasn't a very nice thing for me to think! I'm sorry, Jael, maybe you're just trying to impress Kazuo?
And, sure enough, Kazuo shows obvious signs of being impressed. Aušrine just doesn't understand that kind of cavalier attitude towards wanton violence. Although she does have to admit that she's being a little bit hypochritical, because she does understand what it's like to hate someone enough to want them dead at any cost, though she hides it well. This line of thinking was not one that Aušrine enjoys however, so she decides to leave it for something else.
This isn't exactly the "something else" that she was hoping for, but Aušrine figures it'll have to do.
She blushes just a bit, and says, "Thank you, Hideyoshi-san! That's very sweet of you."

Since false modesty wouldn't work at all in this situation (trying to pretend that she doesn't know exactly how attractive she is never works, and usually offends), Aušrine is momentarily at a loss for what else to say. But then she remembers her social skills and says, "You are quite the handsome young man yourself. Do you have a girlfriend?"

He nods his head. "Forgive me, It was not my intent to embarrass you with my little outburst. It just struck me as something that I should say. I would think you hear that quite often, but still that does not make it any less true."

"As for your question, yes I do, her name is Noriko. We've been friends since grade school and dating since just prior to my erruption. Even back when I was just a simple computer geek she saw fit to grace my life with her presence and vitality, Even though I confess I've never really understood why."

He smiles. "What of you? A woman of your status and Helenic visage can have any man she desires. Is there someone you hold close in you heart?"

He bows his head. "Again my apologies, for such a direct question. Do not feel you are obligated to answer if you do not wish to."

"Uh-huh", says Kazuo, "riiiggghhhhttt. You keep talking like that, an' I'm gonna start comparin' you to small, furry animals again." Not that Jael can see it, though she can probably hear it in his voice, but Kazuo grins mischievously while he's saying this, and it's obvious he's joking.

"Anyway," Kazuo says, looking down at the metal-skinned giant, "Aušrine already offered to go get 'im, an if he doesn't wanna come that's his business." He pauses for a second, and then mutters, "'right thing to do', my ass."
His voice raises again, and Kazuo goes back to addressing Jael, "An' we both know you didn't pick me up 'because it's nice'. You got ulterior motives girl, and don't try an' deny it! Besides, I said I wasn't much good at flying. I didn't say I couldn't. What I couldn't do was pass up the chance to be held tightly by a total babe while floating through the air. Sue me."

Jael's arms tightened around him, on the brink of painful. Her expression, while lost on Kazuo, was an impressive mixture of michevious and irritated. There may have been a bit of evil glee mixing in there as well. "Sue you? No, I'm not the litigious type," she hissed into his ear. "I'm the vengeful type."

Dropping him would have been too simple. Instead, she spun around and threw him away from her, tossing him toward Lake Erie. He was capable of surviving the fall, or else he wouldn't have been so mouthy to her. Without watching his landing, she turned to Aušrine and said, "It was very nice of you to agree to get Dozer. I'd get him if I could. But he's too heavy for me."

She gave Ryusei a glance and nodded to him. "Hey, how are you doing? Ryusei, from Japan, right?"

Ryusei smiles to Jael and nods. "Yes, I am. It is a pleasure to meet you. I am doing very well, how about yourself?"

He regards the nova Jael had just tossed. "I take it he said something to offend you?"

Aušrine has more or less gotten her bearing back by this point. She's been "powered up" long enough for her to get back into the swing of things and to stop looking at the world through her old, baseline eyes.
So her demeanor is much more confident, and her smile very assured, as she says, "There is nothing to forgive, Hideyoshi-san. A man should not have to apologize for being honest. And again, thank you."
Aušrine smiles again and says, "perhaps that is because you aren't supposed to understand why. A good woman is always at least a little bit mysterious, Hideyoshi-san," Aušrine makes a pinching gesture with her index finger and thumb to emphasize her point while she speaks, "a woman without her secrets is like a fable with no moral. There isn't much point." Aušrine's accent becomes more pronounced as she is talking, her 'l's becoming throatier and her 'r's curling adorably, and, for those attuned to such things, it is clear that she is reaching back into some font of Lithuanian (or at least, the family Vasiliauske's) folk wisdom gained during her childhood.
Aušrine looks away with a demure look on her face. How is she supposed to answer this question without going into a somewhat lengthy, and very whiny-sounding discourse on how hard it is to find someone special when you can never be sure if they're responding to you so favorably because of you or because of how you look? Aušrine has several close friends, many acquaintances, and almost as many would-be suitors, but it has been a long time since she had someone she could "hold close in her heart".
So, instead of answering, she looks back up at Ryusei and says, "I think, Hideyoshi-san, the answer to that question is going to have to remain one of my secrets for now. Though I thank you for your interest."
Aušrine knows Kazuo well enough to know that she doesn't need to worry about his landing either, and so, like Jael, she doesn't bother to look. Instead she begins to float calmly in the younger nova's direction and responds to her remark about Dozer, "Thank you, Jael, but it's not a problem. I'd hate to see him left behind when we're all having so much fun up here."
She stops perhaps four feet away from Jael and then says, very quietly, "Why did you do that?" Her eyes flick once downwards, in Kazuo's direction, and then back up to Jael's, where they stay.

Outwardly, Aušrine looks totally calm and unperturbed, so why is the air almost visibly crackling with tension?

Talk about your typical female over-reaction. Jeez.

Actually, Kazuo figured he had about a fifty-fifty chance of winding up in this position – falling ignominiously through the air after being discarded like someone’s unwanted baggage – but still. Kazuo is a pretty insensitive guy though, even by the low standards of other men (never mind the much higher standards of the fairer sex). So, from his perspective, all he’s done is give her a really nice compliment – and what does she do? Instead of using it as an excuse to get a little more physical with him, like he intended (and like she so obviously wanted to), she goes and throws him into the lake.
Or she tries to, anyway. She is obviously overestimating her physical strength (typical, typical female), because Kazuo sails maybe eight or nine feet away from her before his angle of descent is composed of a whole lot of vertical and not much horizontal at all. Oh, well.



Jael never gets a chance to answer however, because all of a sudden a blurred shape that vaguely resembled Kazuo comes zipping through the space between her and Aušrine from the air above, which is probably quite shocking and definitely distracting, and for a number of different reasons. About four meters below the two women, the blurred shape seems to suddenly jump from one in point in space (directly between Jael and Aušrine) to another (just behind Jael), and just as instantaneously it has changed direction and is suddenly traveling rapidly upward.

Travelling at a rather impressive speed, for someone who’s supposed to be so bad at flying, Kazuo scoops Jael up as he passes behind her, and now he’s holding her in much the same way that she was holding him up until just a moment ago.

“I can’t believe you just dropped me like that!”, laughs Kazuo, speaking directly into her ear, and loudly, so as to be heard over the whistling of the wind as they sail directly up like conjoined rockets. Rather than sounding angry, Kazuo sounds almost jovial, and if Jael could see his face, she’d see a big grin on it. “I like you, girl! I take all that shit about rabbits back, because if you got the balls to toss me like that, then I was obviously wrong!”
By this point they are a good hundred meters above the others, and their ascent has begun to slow enough that Kazuo doesn’t have to speak so loudly. He says, “but yunno, I can’t just let something like that go. I mean, I’ve killed people for not much more.” He pauses very briefly, and then spins her part way around in his arms (it’s obvious that her weight means next to nothing to him) and kisses her so quickly and suddenly that he’s already pulled back and is looking her in the eyes again before she knows what’s happened (he really is fast). For such a quick kiss, Kazuo manages to put a surprisingly large amount of passion into it.
“So, we’ll consider that your recompense. If you disagree with the price, and want a return”, says Kazuo with a smile, his voice laden with humor and innuendo, “I’m afraid you’ll have to catch me first.”
And with that, Kazuo gathers his strength and hurls Jael (surprisingly gently given how much force he’s obviously putting into it) upwards, giving her enough extra speed and momentum to send her at least another hundred meters straight up. Kazuo doesn’t do this as an insult, or to get away from Jael, but rather so that she’ll have plenty of time to collect herself and start consciously flying again without any risk of hitting the ground beforehand. But immediately after he throws her, Kazuo begins a downwards dive, tucking in his arms to gain speed. He plummets almost straight down, opening his arms to reveal eufiber-grown patagia and pulling up at the last moment, leveling out into a gently upwards-curving arc and moving at high speed in the general direction of the city.

Praxis's head started to ache as the tensions ran high behind him. As much as he hated looking away from Alexis, some part of him knew that he would be looking towards Ausrine and that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. Praxis's wings shifted as the nova himself repositi